John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego Take It or Toss It

One thing that makes powerful talent powerful is they’ve moved the audience to care about them.  The intimacy of our medium (it’s just you and that one listener, as we learned years ago) flows from a very deep relationship.  Built on vulnerability and the sharing of your life with listeners, the more you let them in and prove you are like them, the more that connection happens.  You have the power to make people care not only based on what you share, but how you share it.  At John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego, John has been abruptly forced out of his apartment because the landlord sold the house.  On its face, you could think:  how do I make them care about my problem? Emotion, and more specifically humor, moves them into the “care column”.  John has accumulated lots of stuff as we all do (very relatable) and must decide what to take to his new place.  The X-factor in this break is the show asking the listener who joined to decide if the item John references should make the move.  The feature they did was called Take It or Toss It and the ruling made by the caller was final.  That John has to move is his problem.  That they figured out how to use a listener in a fun way made it sticky, thus moving the audience to get to know him and care about him.